


Pure Joy

by alexcat



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fluff and Angst, From Sex to Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 17:38:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17430473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/pseuds/alexcat
Summary: Tony is in love and so is Steve and neither know it.





	Pure Joy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sheron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheron/gifts).



Tony Stark was lost in space. He had eaten all his food and was waiting to die when his oxygen ran out. He was surprisingly calm. Getting upset now would be a little counterproductive. He’d tried to figure out a way to get home, to save himself and short of a miracle, he was simply fucked. 

He had a regret. A big one. 

Steve Rogers. 

He and Steve had gotten off to a rough start and had finally become almost friends. Then they’d gone a little farther and had sex. It was casual and fun, nothing emotional. Steve had not been anywhere near the most experienced lover Stark had ever had, but he more than made up for it with enthusiasm and agility. 

Only Tony hadn’t done so well with the casual part. It had become more quickly. He’d fallen in love with Steve. 

Then Sokovia happened and the world lost its collective shit. Tony and Steve landed on the opposite sides of a fight with no winners and to make it worse, Zemo drove the final wedge with the video of his parents being killed by Barnes. 

They didn’t speak after that and Tony missed him every fucking day. 

*

Steve Rogers was broken. No one could console him. He had let the world down. Bucky was lost. Tony was lost. Sam was lost. And he was still here. He stared out the window of the Avengers complex, bitter tears running down his cheeks. 

What was he supposed to do now? 

He didn’t want to admit to anyone, but Tony’s loss hurt the worst in some ways. No one had a clue where Tony was. The last anyone had seen of him was with Strange and the Spiderman kid, boarding a ship that belonged to Thanos. 

Was he dead? Was he lost out there somewhere? 

Not a single soul knew that he and Stark were lovers. There had been a few others over the years, not a lot, but he’d enjoyed Stark the most. Tony was fun and never afraid to try anything, never shy about teaching him things he didn’t know. The sex was supposed to be just for fun, nothing serious. Fucking among friends. 

But it wasn’t. 

Not for him. 

He’d fallen in love with Tony the first time they’d kissed. One weekend after the battle of New York, they’d been the only ones in Stark Tower and an argument in the gym had somehow turned into kissing and fifteen minutes later later, Steve had been on his knees in front of Stark, swallowing every inch of him down his throat. 

He’d been completely lost after that, but he never told anyone, especially Stark. 

Tony would have laughed his ass off. 

*

Carol Danvers had gotten Nick Fury’s page and had tried to contact him. Nothing. She knew what had happened in her sector of space days previously and the pager signal made her wonder if it were galaxy wide. That spoke of it being a Titan, Thanos most likely. He always had been batshit crazy. She’d heard he sent Ronan the Accuser to find the Orb for him. 

She set out for Titan but never made it there before she spotted the ship drifting in space. Her scans indicated a faint life form signal aboard. Further scans told her that the life was a human. She hailed the ship but got no reply. 

She pulled the ship close with her tractor beam. 

The man she found onboard was nearly dead. His oxygen was all but gone. She hooked him up with a portable oxygen tank and took him to her ship. She looked around for anything that might be his, finding his helmet and some armor. She stowed it all and left the sector in case someone was watching. Or hunting for the man. 

She gave him intravenous fluids as he was terribly dehydrated. He’d apparently run out of food and water several days before his oxygen became critical. He’d known he was going to die. 

She set the monitors to alert her if he woke up and headed her ship to earth.

*

Bruce Banner and James Rhodes were both called when Nick Fury’s pager lit up with a strange number. It was not a phone number, as best they could tell, but it was the same number he had paged. 

Neither of them had any real idea what to do with the number. 

Rather than share the information with Ross or anyone from any other government, they contacted Wakanda. The hidden land had the technology to broadcast the number into space. And no one would be the wiser. 

It took a few days, but Wakanda had gotten a signal from someone out there. It was a numerical code, an old one used by pilots. It said. ‘Danvers here. Coming in.’ 

Bruce remembered reading about a pilot named Danvers. She’d actually been a pilot when women fighter jocks were rare. Carol Danvers. She’d died in some sort of test flight back in the nineties. 

“Could this be her?” he asked Rhodes. 

Rhodey still had some fingers in the government and was able to find some information on Carol Danvers. She had not died, but was listed as retired and living outside the US. 

They sent back contact info for Wakanda. 

The messages were a day or more apart at first then they got closer and closer as Carol Danvers and her rescued human got closer to Earth. 

They were less than a day out when he woke. 

“What the hell? Am I dead?” Tony stark looked scared as she touched his bare arm. 

“You’re safe. I’m Carol and I rescued you.” 

“Carol? Just like that? Carol?”

She smiled. “Carol Danvers, USAF, retired. I found you drifting in space and rescued you. We are on our way to Earth. You are?” 

“Tony Stark.” 

“Howard’s son?”

“Uh, yeah. You’re too young to have known my father.” 

“Things are a little different where I’ve been, Tony. I knew your father a long time ago.” 

They talked quite a bit, Tony explaining Thanos and his goals and how he ended up alone and dying in space. Carol told him little, but assured him that she would not harm him. He told her to send a message to Banner and Rhodes, informing them that they were headed home. Carol did that, deciding not to inform him that she was coming in on stealth mode, and that even the people she’d been signaling weren’t going to be able to trace her approach or landing. 

They landed on the landing pad at the Avengers compound. No one had told Captain Rogers, so Rhodes decided it was up to him. 

He knocked on Rogers’ door. 

“Yeah?” 

“Cap, there’s a ship here from space. We think it’s a woman named Carol Danvers with a man she picked up somewhere near Titan.” 

Steve’s heart pounded as he opened the door. “Tony?”

“I think so, Steve.” 

“Is that what I heard land? I saw nothing.” 

“Her cloaking tech is way more advanced than ours. Come on.” 

The two men headed to the landing pad. Everyone else was already out there along with a medical crew. The hatch opened and a gorgeous blond woman in a flight suit came out. She motioned the men with the stretcher to come aboard. Steve ran toward the ship, too. No one dared to stop him. 

When Steve got close to the pilot, her jaw dropped for a moment. “My god, you’re him! Captain Rogers! They still talked about you in the 90s. I thought you were dead!” 

“Nope. Just frozen in the Arctic.” 

“I want to talk to you later. I assume he’s important to you or you wouldn’t have shoved the stretcher out of the way.” 

“He is.” 

She showed him Tony, who smiled wanly at him. “Hey, Cap,” he whispered. 

Steve took his hand. “Tony.” There were no more words that he could think of. 

One of the medics stepped closer. “Sir, we need –” 

“I’ve got him.” Steve leaned down and kissed Tony in front of one and all. “You’re an idiot, Stark, and I love you.”

Tony closed his eyes and smiled back as Steve lifted him from the stretcher, leaving the medical personnel to grab the IV bag and follow beside them. 

“I, uh, missed you, Steve. Good to be home. Love you, too.” 

Steve’s heart was pounding, not out of fear this time but joy. For just this one moment, he felt pure joy.


End file.
